He walked to Italian and sat in the back of the class even though Mr. Bonangelo had assigned him a seat up close. Mr. Bonangelo liked to keep troubled kids and troublemakers close to him. Eugene didn’t know which Mr. Bonangelo thought he was, but he hated the front of the room, hated Mr. Bonangelo breathing on him, hated his bad jokes. Mr. Bonangelo had a limp too, something about polio when he was a kid, and he was always using this to try to get in Eugene’s good graces. But that made Eugene hate him more, the guy thinking they were what, connected somehow?
“Eugene,” Mr. Bonangelo said, “please, up front now, son.”
Eugene ignored him.
“You want another detention?”
Eugene trudged up to the front of the class, sat next to Billy Morris. Billy looked like he’d just smoked up, eyes gone red and heavy, a rubberbandy look on his face.
Mr. Bonangelo said, “That’s a boy.”
That’s a boy.
Eugene folded open his notebook and started scratching lines in the margin with his pen.
Mr. Bonangelo cleared his throat. “Mr. Calabrese.”
Eugene said, “What, yo?”
“‘What, yo?’” Mr. Bonangelo said. He laughed. “‘What, yo?’ You must be kidding, Mr. Calabrese. Try again.”
“What?”
“Try: Yes, Mr. Bonangelo, sir?”
Some kids in the back of the class laughed.
Eugene stopped drawing in his margins. He squared up, shoulders out. “Fuck you, yo.”
Mr. Bonangelo’s face turned the color of spoiled meat. “To Principal Aherne’s. Now, Mr. Calabrese. Now.” He was rattled, almost quivering with rage, limping around in front of the chalkboard frantically. He had his phone out and was punching in a number.
Other guys in the class were stirring in their seats, pressing Mr. Bonangelo to choke Eugene to death. Vinny Liozzi said, “It’s worth losing your job, Mr. Bonangelo. Kill this kid.”
Eugene stood up, put his books in his backpack, and got out of the room as fast as he could. Mr. Bonangelo stuck his head out the door after him. “Wait right there, Mr. Calabrese. I just called Brother Dennis. He’s coming to accompany you. Make sure you don’t take any detours.”
Eugene stood still, staring at the floor. It was peach-colored with flecks of yellow and brown, and he’d never noticed just how ugly it was.
Brother Dennis came lumbering around the corner by the elevators, excited, acting as if his whole life had been leading up to this moment. “I hear Mr. Calabrese needs an escort,” he said, coming closer.
“He does indeed,” Mr. Bonangelo said.
“Well, then, I’m your man.” Brother Dennis put a hand on Eugene’s shoulder. “Come along, son.”
Eugene flinched.
“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a real live wire.” Brother Dennis nudged Eugene now.
Eugene said, “Keep your hands off me, yo.”
“‘Yo,’” Mr. Bonangelo said. “He says that a lot.”
Brother Dennis aped him, too. “‘Yo, yo, yo.’ Tough talk.”
“You want to know what this punk said to me, Brother?”
“I sure do.”
Bonangelo slumped his shoulders, did his best Eugene: “He said, ‘Eff you, yo.’ Except he said the word.”
“Disgusting talk.” Brother Dennis shook his head.
“No way for a young OLN man to speak,” Mr. Bonangelo said.
“Grounds for suspension, certainly. Maybe worse. What’ll your mother think, young man?”
Eugene shrugged.
Brother Dennis guided Eugene down the hallway, past the auditorium, to Principal Aherne’s office.
Martha, the secretary, was sitting behind a desk in the alcove outside of Aherne’s office, filing her nails.
“Mr. Bonangelo was having some problems with our young friend here,” Brother Dennis said.
“I’ll buzz him,” Martha said. She hit a button on the phone in front of her and bent over it to speak into the receiver. “He says go in.”
Brother Dennis opened Aherne’s door and showed Eugene in with a dramatic wave of his arm.
Principal Aherne was behind his desk. He closed a game of solitaire on his computer. “Mr. Calabrese,” he said. “Well, well, well. Sit down.”
Eugene sat down in the egg-brown wingback chair across from Aherne. Brother Dennis stood next to him, arms crossed. Aherne opened his desk drawer. He took out a clementine and peeled it. It smelled like someone had sprayed orange Lysol in the room. He piled the strips of rind in a used tissue. Eugene examined the other stuff on Aherne’s desk. A picture of his hollow-cheeked mother looking like a zombie. Fax machine. Picture of his wife and three kids, the youngest a girl who had Down’s Syndrome and always dressed like a ballerina. Box of Kleenex. A Derek Jeter bobblehead. A plaque remembering Brother Mathis, the old principal who’d lost his mind and wandered into Owl’s Head Park one night too many in a row and been put in a home where he lived out his last days in a haze of soft foods and fat nurses in bright scrubs. An eight-by-ten picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus hung behind Aherne on the wall.
“What was Mr. Calabrese’s offense, Brother?” Aherne said.
“Would you like to tell him, son?” Brother Dennis said.
Eugene said nothing.
“Language unbecoming,” Brother Dennis said to Aherne.
“What was the severity level?”
“Ten.”
Eugene couldn’t believe they were talking like this.
“Ten.” Aherne rocked back in his chair, closed his eyes, and scratched his chin. “Ten. My, I hate to hear that.” He paused, turned to Brother Dennis. “You can leave, Brother. I’d like to talk to Mr. Calabrese alone. Thank you.”
Brother Dennis half-curtsied and left the office.
Eugene looked down at his lap, grinding his teeth.
“I’d like to speak frankly,” Aherne said. “Okay? I understand that with your affliction you have a hard time of it. I get that. I do, Mr. Calabrese. I don’t know what it’s like to have a limp, to be different from everybody in that way. I’m not sure what that does to you. Maybe it makes you angry at the world. You know who else had every right to be mad at the world?” He stopped, put his elbows up on the desk, made a steeple out of his hands, and exhaled. He wheeled around and pointed to Christ’s big, exploding heart. “Jesus Christ.”
Eugene almost cracked up.
“You need to learn how to deal with your anger, Mr. Calabrese. You need to figure out how to channel it. Get involved in some clubs, sports. I’m not sure what sport you could play with your situation but I’m sure there’s something you could do. Maybe you could get involved with the Ryken Club. Most of the students in that club have,” he paused, considering his words, “an affliction.”
Eugene couldn’t believe he was being called retarded by Principal Aherne.
Aherne continued: “We’ll work on this later. First, I want you to tell me exactly what you said to Mr. Bonangelo so we can deal with your punishment. Brother Dennis said your level of severity was a ten. That’s very unsettling. What did you say?”
Eugene didn’t hesitate. “I told Mr. Bonangelo, ‘Fuck you.’”
Aherne rocked back in his chair again and let out a whoosh. He punched a button on his phone and lifted the receiver. “Martha, will you get Mr. Calabrese’s mother on the phone?” He hung up and waited.
Eugene said, “My mother’s at work.”
“I think this takes precedence. This is a very serious situation. Do you understand, Mr. Calabrese? I’ve had students expelled for less.” Aherne sunk half of the clementine into his mouth and spit the seeds into a crumpled Kleenex.
Eugene knew Aherne was bullshitting. No way they’d expel him. He was a paying customer.
“I’m stepping out for a moment, Mr. Calabrese,” Aherne said.
To speak to his mother. Then what? She’d flip, leave work, make a big deal out of having to leave work, come to OLN, pick him up, bitch him out in the car, bitch him out at
home, take away some shit that Sweat had given him, probably his iPod. She’d lecture him for the next month, every chance she got, about how far getting in trouble got you, about how he was letting her down, and then she’d forget for a little while and things would be okay, she’d stay out of his shit, and then it’d happen all over again. But part of him must have enjoyed it. Otherwise, why’d he say what he said to Bonangelo? He knew where that was going to lead him. Maybe he just wanted to test the limits, see how far they’d let him go before they did expel him or before his mother had to send him to military school.
Aherne came back in the room and sat down in his chair. He pointed to the phone on his desk, red lights blinking under the numbers. “Pick it up, Mr. Calabrese. Your mother would like to speak to you.”
Eugene stood up and went over to the phone. He picked up the receiver.
“Eugene,” his mother said, almost whispering, pretend calm. “I’m at work so I can’t talk loud, you understand?” She paused. “But I’m very upset.”
He pictured his mother getting red in the face, tears penny-thick on her lower lashes, trying to keep the conversation private, trying not to show the other girls at her office that her no-good son was in trouble again.
“I get what, two calls in an hour? One from Augie. One from Principal Aherne. Both saying essentially the same thing. Augie called the cops on you. He wanted to press charges. I had to talk him down. Now Principal Aherne says you might get expelled. For saying,” lowering her voice even more, “‘eff you’ to Mr. Bonangelo. This how I raised you? I raised you to go to church and help old people. What are you trying to do, put me in an early grave? This is supposed to be a happy time, your Uncle Ray Boy back.”
Eugene said nothing.
“You’ve got nothing to say for yourself?”
“I’m—”
“You’re what? You better say you’re sorry, young man. I swear. You better apologize to me, to Principal Aherne, to Augie, and especially, especially right now, to Mr. Bonangelo. Is that understood?”
Eugene knew what his mother wanted to hear. She wanted him to say, Yes, Mom. I understand. Instead, he said, “I’m not apologizing.”
“You’re not what? What’d you say?” his mother said.
“I got nothing to be sorry for.”
He could see his mother taking the phone away from her ear, wiping tears from her eyes, making an I-can’t-believe-this face. “I don’t know who you think you are, Eugene. You got a lot to be sorry for. Principal Aherne’s suspending you. I’m sending your Uncle Ray Boy to pick you up in fifteen minutes. You be ready for him. And by the time he gets there I better hear that you’ve apologized to everybody. I have to spell that out? You can save your apology to me for later. Make it a good one.” She hung up with a huff.
Eugene put the phone down.
“That’s one angry lady,” Aherne said. “And she has every right to be. I gather she told you you’re suspended?”
Eugene looked past Aherne at Jesus on the wall.
“Your suspension will be shorter, two days, if you apologize. It’ll be longer, a week or more, if you don’t. I’d aim for the shorter suspension. Permanent record and all of that. Not to mention your mother’s forgiveness.” Aherne buzzed Martha and told her to bring Mr. Bonangelo in when classes switched in five minutes and to ask Brother Dennis to cover for him. Then Aherne turned his attention back to Eugene. “Now I understand that your Uncle Ray’s coming to pick you up.” Aherne put his chin in the air. “Not the alum we’re proudest of, as I imagine you’re well aware. But I hope that he’s honestly rehabilitated. I hope the system’s done some good for him. He was, after all, just a kid himself when what happened happened. You should look at your uncle’s mistakes, son, and learn from them. Believe me, you don’t want to wind up in prison. Ask your uncle. You think he wouldn’t like to have those sixteen years back? I guarantee he’d like to have them back. The prime of his life. His twenties up in smoke just like that.”
Eugene had heard all of this before.
“If I can give you some more advice, Mr. Calabrese, it’d be to treasure your mother. Plan a topnotch apology. Buy her flowers. Wait on her hand and foot. Believe me, one day you’ll regret you weren’t better to her. She’ll be sick, at the end of her life, probably not for a long time, but I guarantee you’ll be sitting at her bedside, saying, ‘I should’ve been better to you when I had the chance. I didn’t realize how short life actually is.’ And life is short. Ask Brother Mathis. You think seventy-eight is old? It passes like this.” He snapped his fingers. “And then we have to stand before God and show Him what we’ve done. We’ve got to say, ‘Here’s what I did that’s good.’ But we’ve also got to say, ‘Here’s what I did that’s bad.’ And that list tends to be very long. ‘I stole, I lied, I lusted, I treated my mother like garbage.’ And there’s no way around it, no lie you can tell that God can’t see through. You spend your whole life making choices that will lead you up to Judgment Day. It’s not too late for you to start making the right choices. Be good to your mother, exude kindness, be merciful, be forgiving.” Aherne leaned back in his chair, impressed with himself, as if he’d worked on this little speech for ages.
Martha opened the door and Mr. Bonangelo was standing behind her. He slid into the room on his polio leg and stood beside Eugene.
“Mr. Bonangelo,” Aherne said, “Mr. Calabrese here has something he’d like to say to you.”
“I gather Brother Dennis has filled you in,” Mr. Bonangelo said.
“He has.”
“I’ve never, in all my years, been spoken to like that by a student. Just for the record. When I was going to school at St. Augustine in the Fifties, you even looked at a teacher cock-eyed and they’d beat the ever-loving crap out of you. Those were good days. I miss those days. One time, one time only, I spoke out of turn in class and Brother Clemente—how could I ever forget him?—put me in my place with a yardstick. I never spoke out of turn again. I did my work, never said so much as boo. What do you fear, Mr. Calabrese? Nothing. No one like Brother Clemente exists now. OLN is not St. Augustine’s. We live in a time when you can say whatever you want and walk away from it. So, you apologize, that’s fine. Principal Aherne and your mother have both convinced you it’s the right move. But it’ll mean absolutely nothing to me.” Mr. Bonangelo let out a breath. He was sweating.
Eugene looked down at the carpet, swirls of gold and blue, the school’s colors. He noted where the carpet was threadbare under his shoes, worn down under the pressure of all such tense sit-downs over the years, kids like him trying to kick into a tunnel world.
“Well,” Aherne said, “You still need to apologize, Mr. Calabrese. For what it’s worth. Make it sincere.”
“‘Sincere,’” Mr. Bonangelo said. “That’s good. Yeah, make it sincere, Eugene.”
Eugene picked his head up and looked right at Mr. Bonangelo. “Fuck you, yo,” he said again.
Uncle Ray Boy was late. Eugene was sitting on a foldout chair next to Martha’s desk. She was filling out some sort of invoice, glasses down on the edge of her nose, and Eugene was trying to see between the buttons on her black and red flower-print blouse. She was old, early fifties, and he could see the bottom sides of the padded cups of her yellowing bra and wrinkly swaths of skin that looked like pinches of cottage cheese.
Things had not ended up well in Aherne’s office. Mr. Bonangelo lunged at Eugene after he said “Fuck you, yo” for the second time in an hour. Aherne got between them, knowing that Mr. Bonangelo would lose his job no matter what if he put a hand on a student. Eugene dared him to do something. Brother Dennis barged in after a few seconds and dragged Mr. Bonangelo to safety. Aherne looked at Eugene like he’d just fingered his cat’s asshole. “You, young man, are in deep, deep trouble,” Aherne said. Then he walked him to his locker to get his backpack and jacket.
Eugene was thinking that he’d honestly upped his chances for expulsion, as unlikely as it still was. Mr. Bonangelo had been guilty of entrap
ment or some shit and he was sure Aherne would take that into consideration. Not that he wanted to come crawling back to OLN. Being expelled was okay with him, though it would break his mother’s heart. His grandparents, too.
Uncle Ray Boy came through the door, still wearing the same clothes, purple-black bags under his eyes, back stooped.
Eugene stood up.
“You’re the uncle?” Martha said.
“I am,” Uncle Ray Boy said.
She buzzed Aherne. He came out of the office and stood in front of Ray Boy and Eugene. “Ray,” he said. “I hope you’re doing better.”
“I’m good,” Uncle Ray Boy said. “You?”
“I’d be better if your nephew would’ve made this simple.”
Uncle Ray Boy didn’t look at Eugene. “My sister told me.”
“Well, I’m afraid that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Things went downhill after I spoke to Eugene’s mother. He’s in much deeper trouble. I’ll be calling her back soon. There’s a possibility we’ll have to expel him. He’s done something worthy of such action.”
“Whatever you need to do.”
“I suggest you have a talk with your nephew. Warn him against such behavior. Let him know where being a troublemaker gets you. You know best.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
Eugene couldn’t believe Uncle Ray Boy was just going along with this, wasn’t tearing Aherne a new one. Nothing tough came out of his mouth. Only you’re-better-than-me shit.
“You seem like you’ve turned things around some, Ray,” Aherne said. “That’s good. I’m very happy for you. I’m happy God granted you a second chance. Eugene might not be so lucky. He’s headed down a bad road.”
Uncle Ray Boy was nodding. “I’ll have a talk with him,” he said.
Aherne turned to Eugene. “Your future is uncertain. Think of ways to repent, son.”
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